The Other Mockingjays
by Zeviz
Summary: What would happen if "The Girl on Fire" failed to make enough of an impression to start a revolution?
1. Prologue

AN: What would happen if for some reason "The Girl on Fire" failed to make enough of an impression to start a revolution? This story was inspired by gethsemane342's collection of stories "Five Worlds in which Katniss Everdeen Did Not Become the Mockingjay". Thank you to AD for beta reading this story.

* * *

Prologue

Almost every year there were some tributes who rebelled against the Games. In large ways or small, quietly or openly, intentionally or unintentionally, but almost every Game had a potential to become a disaster for the President. Or at least an embarrassment.

Some tributes either refused, or were almost physically incapable, of killing, or even seriously hurting, another person. Some complained about the games while in the Arena. Some even scathingly condemned The Capitol as they were about to die. After all, desperate people with nothing left to lose can speak far more freely than anybody else in that kind of police state. And to a person who lost the little control they might have over their life, the ability to speak their mind would be even more gratifying - the final act of freedom before the inevitable death.

So why didn't any other tribute spark a rebellion earlier? The simple answer is: Censorship. Even supposedly live broadcasts were always slightly time-delayed and heavily edited. So if the Gamemakers saw a potentially dangerous situation developing, they would cut away to another part of the Arena, or a studio interview, or some reaction shots from the audiences. By the time the focus returned to the tribute in question, the situation would be over. A rebellious speech, a friendly conversation with another tribute, a decision to not attack a weaker opponent ... all of them would happen off-camera, with the cuts arranged in such a way that nobody would suspect that anything important happened while they weren't looking.

Creative editing could even make a tribute's actions seem to be the opposite of what he intended: A refusal to fight can be edited to look like a quick loss from an outmatched competitor. A defiant speech could be "adjusted" into an incoherent scream. And a non-hostile meeting could be turned into tributes stalking, but never quite catching, each other.

However, in time the Rebels and their Capitol sympathizers found ways to get around these safeguards.

The first successful attempt was made during the 74th Games, when the Star-Crossed Lovers, the Couple on Fire, captured the hearts of the audience. The couple died too quickly for their spark to grow into a flame of rebellion, but their job was done: The people behind their performance proved that the Games' censorship could be subverted, even if not entirely bypassed.


	2. The Lone Wolf

Chapter 1 - The Lone Wolf

But bypassed it was, and in the most spectacular way possible:

Algo Silon was an 18 year old tribute from District 3 in the 77th Games. Like most children of his district, he received an excellent education, but unlike most other District 3 children, he didn't just learn math, physics, and other subjects required to work in high tech factories. His parents wanted him to be a "well-rounded person", and so he read books on history and philosophy, great works of literature, and political treatises. Most of these books were just piles of loose printouts hidden between pages of scientific journals, or text that Algo could read on his father's computer only after several steps that he was never shown. As he later learned, the reason his reading material looked so differed from regular books was that just owning most of them could get his parents in serious trouble with the Peacekeepers. And even when Algo was too young to understand the reality of Panem's politics, his parents made sure he knew how important it was to never mention his extracurricular reading outside the house.

Algo's parents weren't alone in their rebellious views. As he grew older, he met with their friends who, while being accomplished engineers and scientists, as expected from the well-to-do people of District 3, could also talk about Aristotle and Kant, Luther and Locke. And not just talk about them, but apply their theories to the world of Panem. With their connections in communications industry, some of his parents' friends could also talk about the true situation in the districts and the Capitol, and the vast difference between the official propaganda and the harsh reality. The gatherings of his parents' friends weren't intended as political meetings, but they liked to discuss the way the world worked, and such conversations tend to freely wander from physics to politics.

So by the time Algo was eighteen, he knew that most people in the Districts lived in desperate poverty, and even the relatively rich weren't doing much better. He knew that most of the Capitol population, while definitely better off, didn't live nearly as well as expected either, and was simply distracted by the official propaganda, with glamorous shows such as the Hunger Games playing an important part in making average Capitol citizens forget the much blander reality of their lives. He also knew of other historic societies with similar problems, and the revolutions, whether bloody or peaceful, that brought them down. He wasn't told any specifics, but he realized that things could happen in Panem. In fact, the spread of information that his family participated in was itself an act of rebellion, the first step that could quickly lead to much more.

And when Algo's name was drawn for the 77th games, he realized that he no longer had anything to lose. As most District 3 tributes before him, he had no illusions about his chances of coming back alive. So to all outside observers he looked no different from all the other hopeless tributes who tried to hide their despair. But in reality, he was already working on a plan.

Only two other people in all of Panem had any idea what Algo was going to do: During his tearful farewells to his parents, he tried to lift their spirits by saying that not all hope was lost, and giving examples of generals that won against seemingly overwhelming odds. To all the Peacekeepers watching the hidden cameras this looked like just another attempt by a hopeless tribute to cheer up himself and his family. After all, none of them received the kind of education that would allow them to even recognize the generals discussed. So they had no chance of noticing that all of these generals had fought in various civil wars and uprisings.

That conversation was the only clue Algo's parents got, but it was enough. So when his plan was put into action, they were prepared to do their part, which later proved to be just as important as Algo's own act of rebellion.

* * *

Algo knew about the censorship in the games, so he chose to act during the single moment when his words would be carried truly live to the entire nation. The moment where his speech could not be quietly censored out. The point where cutting his mike would be the only option available to the censors, and even that would be an unprecedented victory: the first rebellious disruption of the Games' live broadcast. There had been some technical problems over the years of the Games, but nobody ever managed to intentionally create a visible disruption.

So during his pre-game interview, Algo answered Caesar's very first question about the Capitol with "What do you expect me to think of the people who take pleasure in the murder of children? The people who do nothing while half the people in the Districts are starving ..."

Caesar was a very experienced interviewer, and a possibility of a rebellious tribute had been discussed when he initially took this job, but nothing like this had come up in all the years of his interviews. Such an unexpected and unprecedented act of defiance shocked Caesar so much that by the time he tried to retake control of the interview it was too late.

The worst part was that Algo's speech was very articulate, calm, and well-informed. It clearly wasn't an incoherent rambling of a distraught child, which was the first spin Caesar tried to put on it. It wasn't a mistaken impression of a simple, uneducated boy, which was the second angle Caesar tried to regain control. In fact, that backfired even more, because it gave Algo an opportunity to present his best arguments: He used all the information about the economic situation of the Districts that his parents' friends passed on to concisely paint a picture very different from the one presented by the official propaganda. Then he pointed at the other tributes and showed the signs of malnutrition, obvious once you knew what to look for. Finally, he invited everybody to review the recordings of the reaping ceremonies to watch the crowds for the signs he listed and for the overall poverty of the areas shown.

Everybody was so shocked that Algo's mike wasn't cut during the whole debate. In fact, his mike wasn't cut until half a minute after the regular interview-ending buzzer. At which point Algo quietly got up and calmly walked back to his seat in the line of stunned tributes.

* * *

Needless to say, Algo didn't do well in the Games themselves. While his outburst didn't generate any immediately visible reaction from the Gamemakers, their response in the arena was obvious. Less than half an hour from the start of the games, Algo ran straight into a pack of carnivorous mutts. As one of the reporters pointed out before the story was banned from the news, Algo's death was one of the earliest Gamemaker-caused deaths in the Hunger Games' history. The earliest, in fact, if you discount the deaths of tributes who ran off cliffs, or triggered other easily avoidable traps.

Algo's parents didn't outlive him for long. Within an hour of his interview they were arrested by the Peacekeepers. However, they were ready, and the whole brutal arrest was captured on tiny cameras hidden throughout their apartment and broadcast to their friends in another part of the district. Not only that, but with a friend's help Algo's father managed to hide a tiny microphone and transmitter on his body so well, that his friends got a full audio transcript of his, and his wife's, interrogation and torture session. By the time the Peacekeepers who noticed an unauthorized broadcast from their headquarters traced it to its source, it was too late, since even the Capitol doesn't have the technology to punish the dead.

These recordings not only stirred up the dissident community of District 3, but, as such things tend to do, they quickly made their way to the Capitol, where soon enough everybody heard them despite the fact that nobody dared to mention them in public. Seeing the brutality of the arrest and hearing the sounds of torture did as much to shake people's confidence in the Capitol's government as Algo's initial speech.

As for the Districts, while a few people were scared away from the dissident community after seeing the reality of the danger they faced, most had been willing to accept this kind of danger from the start, and were simply inflamed by another example of the Capitol's brutality.

Algo's speech hadn't triggered an open rebellion, but its destabilizing effect prepared the ground for those who followed.


	3. The Sacrificial Lamb

Chapter 2 - The Sacrificial Lamb

The next blow came not from an articulate young man, but from an innocent little girl.

Rosemary Windbloom was a 13 year old tribute from District 12 in the 78th Games. Unlike Algo, Rosie did not have a strong classical education. In fact, she did not have much of an education at all. In the poorer parts of District 12 even basic literacy was considered a luxury, despite the mandatory school attendance. After all, reading isn't needed to watch the propaganda broadcasts and to work in the mines.

Nor did Rosie have a rebellious family. Her parents spent all their efforts trying to feed their children, rather than reading philosophical tracts and discussing politics at semi-secret gatherings. So she had no more rebellious tendencies than any other child from the Seam: She didn't need smuggled statistics to know about the poverty of Panem, but she didn't see anything that could be done about it. And she definitely didn't see herself joining a rebellion, much less becoming a symbol of one.

However, with the ground prepared by the events of the previous year, Rosie ended up in the right place at the right time to become the next rallying point for the coming rebellion. She was far from the first terrified thirteen year old girl who cried when her name was called. There was nothing new about the disapproval from the District crowd that watched her walk to her doom, with nobody stepping up to take her place. There was nothing new about the ever-drunk past victor barely standing upright on the stage, or the ridiculously cheerful Capitol escort who seemed oblivious to her audience's disapproval. The stone-faced mayor, the ring of armed Peacekeepers around the square, the shabby appearance of the square itself and the District people filling it...

These scenes had been as old as the Games themselves. Or at least as old as most people could remember. But after the doubts were planted the minds of the people in the Capitol, many of them truly saw this scene for the first time: Not a grand spectacle that it was always presented as, but a tragedy for the people who already looked worse off than most of those the viewers knew personally.

The disquiet among the Capitol audience grew when Rosie arrived to the Opening Ceremony in a costume reminiscent of a tombstone. Cinna swore to everybody who asked, including several security officials who asked quite stringently indeed, that he was simply using a rock theme to symbolize the mining district. With the variations of the coal theme done to death, and even fire and industry explored in his previous works, Cinna claimed that a rock was simply the next motif to try to keep the show fresh for the audience. And a rock would have been all they saw, if the audience's minds hadn't been primed by Algo's speech the year before.

The quiet murmurs of discontent became a lot louder after the Tribute Interviews, where Rosie charmed the audience with her youthful innocence, while saying things that would have been considered treasonous if they weren't told by a cute little girl. After all, who could accuse a charming thirteen year old of being a sinister rebel agent? It also helped that, while she was no more underfed than the rest of the children from the Seam, to the Capitol audience used to seeing healthy children on their streets Rosie looked no older than ten. Her slightly oversized dress, vaguely reminiscent of a burial shroud, further highlighted her youthful appearance while reminding the audience of the inevitability of her death.

Cinna might have gone too far with that dress, but with the tensions already so high, the security officials decided that arresting him would simply fan the flames by acknowledging the hidden meaning of his designs. So instead he was quietly sacked from his position as a stylist, with a message passed on to all potential employers that hiring him would be "inadvisable".

Haymitch also avoided serious punishment, because reviewing the surveillance videos from Rosie's mentoring sessions showed that her responses during the interviews were more provocative than what she discussed with her mentor. For example, the answer to the "favorite thing about the Capitol" question was supposed to be simply "all the wonderful food here", instead of the reply she actually gave: "All the wonderful food here! I never saw this much food before."

Although, as with Cinna's costumes, the most subversive parts of the interview had been suggested by Rosie's mentor, but could be explained away as just regular advice to a tribute whose main hope of getting sponsors was to play up the "innocent little girl" angle. After all, her strategy really was going to consist mostly of hiding from the careers and the other dangerous tributes, even if "I'm scared I'll be killed - everyone's so much bigger than me, so I'll try hiding" wasn't what the officials wanted to hear during the interviews. While this phrasing wouldn't have worked for an older tribute, it sounded perfectly natural for a scared child. And "a scared child" image was Rosie's only way of getting sponsors, as Haymitch explained to the security officials that questioned him.

The only questionable moment captured on tape was during the part of a strategy discussion, when Haymitch insisted that Rosie's only hope of survival was to try to get a backpack from the Cornucopia. Rosie pointed out that this would be suicide, but Haymitch kept arguing that it was the only way for her to get enough supplies to survive for over a week: She might have many sponsors, but not so many that she could get a sleeping bag, water bottle, a weapon, and several weeks worth of food as sponsor gifts. At the end of this argument, Rosie looked straight at Haymitch and asked him if he really thought this course of action was the best for her. It was impossible to tell due to the angle of the camera, but Haymitch appeared to have difficulty meeting her eyes as he answered that his job as District 12's sole mentor was to care about all of his tributes.

Haymitch claimed to the security officials that he simply meant that Rosie was more likely to be ignored during the Bloodbath, and her getting the supplies would allow him to direct more sponsorship money to his other tribute. However, his words could also be interpreted to mean that he wanted to help the future tributes of District 12 by overthrowing the Capitol's rule to prevent any more Games from happening. It was hard to reconcile the image of a drunkard who couldn't even stand straight during most official functions with the idea of a cunning Rebel mastermind who would put hidden meanings into conversations with an angelic-looking thirteen year old girl. So the Capitol security officials decided to take him at his word, especially given that Haymitch was too prominent to disappear quietly, and any overt action would only make things worse. In such a charged situation even an "accidental death from alcohol overdose" could be easily "misinterpreted".

As for Rosie herself, as a child of the Seam she knew enough about hunger and cold to realize that whatever Haymitch's motives, his advice was correct: She would've been unlikely to survive for long without any basic supplies, and getting these supplies from the sponsors would mean no food later, when she'd really need it. It was even possible, though unlikely, that she not only understood Haymitch's hidden message about the value of making her a martyr, but agreed to go along with the idea for political reasons.

Either way, Rosie broke the hearts of the Capitol audience when she was cut in half during the Bloodbath while struggling with a backpack that was big enough for her to fit inside.

Rosie's brutal death caused the quiet murmurs of discontent in the Capitol to escalate into public calls for change. Most of them were focused on raising the Games' lower age limit to fourteen or fifteen, but there were also more drastic proposals. The people of the Districts were similarly inflamed, but that wasn't as new as the public discontent in the Capitol itself.


End file.
